June 19 (Bloomberg) -- Julian Assange, founder and
publisher of WikiLeaks, said his legal advisers have talked with
lawyers for Edward Snowden to help arrange asylum in Iceland for
the American contractor who leaked information on U.S.
electronic surveillance methods to newspapers.

“We have been in touch with Mr. Snowden’s legal team,”
Assange said on a telephone conference call with reporters
today. “Our people in Iceland have been in contact with his
legal team and the Icelandic government” and are “in the
process of brokering his asylum in Iceland.”

Asked if he had spoken directly with Snowden, 29, who fled
to Hong Kong before revealing he was the source of the leaked
reports, Assange declined to specify details. Snowden has said
he hoped to make his way to Iceland.

WikiLeaks is an anti-secrecy organization that publishes
government documents on its website. Assange, an Australian
national, has been holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London
for the past year. Assange had exhausted options in U.K. courts
to avert extradition to Sweden, where he faces questions on
allegations of rape and sexual molestation, which he denies.

Assange was joined on the conference call by Daniel
Ellsberg, the former Pentagon analyst who provided the Pentagon
Papers, a secret study of the U.S. war in Vietnam, to the New
York Times in 1971; Thomas Drake, a former analyst at the
National Security Agency who disclosed what he called waste,
fraud and abuse at the intelligence agency; and James Goodale,
author of “Fighting for the Press” and a former New York Times
lawyer.

All of them supported Snowden, who worked for the NSA as a
contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp., which fired
him after his role in leaking secrets was disclosed.

“The fact is we acted in the same spirit and I feel great
affinity with each of them,” Ellsberg said, referring to
Snowden, Drake, Assange and Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier
who’s on trial for providing a trove of classified State
Department documents to WikiLeaks. Each of the leakers
“performed a very great service,” Ellsberg said.